I won’t say “Goodbye”.
You can’t make me.
The word is too strong,
it’s meaning too clear,
the emptiness implicit in it’s utterance too near.
I won’t say “Goodbye”.
I don’t want to.
I’ve done this before.
I know that it feels
like a door has been slammed on the wake of my heels.
I won’t say “Goodbye”.
But, you can.
I’ll hear what you say
as I walk away,
and you’ll hear my silence as a promise to stay.
A black crow caws from the topmost spire of a supple pine; the branch we might trim to allow placement of a star. Storm winds challenge the tree, and the bird sways while surveying his domain, never considering the precariousness of his perch.
Home is a pinestraw bowl nestled artfully in the arms of another tree, decorated by bits of string, tiny shreds of paper, and cotton batting remnants of a discarded dog toy. Here a mother-to-be sits in anticipation of her progeny, never allowing rain or wind or hunger to unseat her. She has a destiny to fulfill.
And they fly.
They spread their wings on capricious currents, and they do so without benefit of GPS, maps, or weather reports. They know where they are going and trust that they will get there;
never questioning,
never second-guessing,
gliding and swooping in faith.
To my mind, Halloween has always represented the top of a slide; a long slide, the big metal kind that burns your legs in summer, but not so badly that you don’t mount the ladder a second, and even a third, time. And, it doesn’t go straight down. There are twists and turns, and bumps and dips. All in all, it’s a pretty raucous ride.
Thanksgiving used to represent one of the bumps, a high-point on the path towards the next bump of Christmas, on the way to the New Year’s sand pit that leaves tiny black flecks on the backs of your calves and the palms of your hands.
Nowadays, though, I would characterize Thanksgiving as more of a twist, a turn requiring careful navigation before resuming the descent.
My reticence about the holiday became clear to me a couple of years ago as I read posts on a social website to which I subscribed. There were several prompts along the line of “How Will You Spend Your Thanksgiving?”, and “Share Your Favorite Thanksgiving Memory”. As I scanned menus I wouldn’t choose from and ticked off strangers’ guest lists, complete with anecdotes, I began to feel sad. It became clear, relatively quickly, that my plan to post a virtual cornucopia of familial dysfunction would elicit a reaction similar to that experienced by a person unable to quash a particularly loud belch after finishing an elegant meal. Not that I have ever been in that exact situation, mind you. My embarrassing belch came disguised as a yawn, which I shielded prettily with one hand, in hopes that our English teacher wouldn’t mistake a night of late-night TV for impolite disinterest. The offending sound was as much a surprise to me as it was to the quarterback of our high school football team, who sat in the next row and two desks closer to the front of the room. His was the only face to turn in my direction.
“Excuse you!”, he bellowed through his laugh which soon became a chorus.
I responded with a weak smile, refusing to acquiesce to an overwhelming desire to escape the room. My intention here, though, is not to write about teenage angst.
My mother was a product of the times in which she lived. The decade of the sixties is widely associated with peace, love, and rock and roll. But due to a burgeoning space program, the sixties also ushered in canned vegetables, enveloped spice packs, and crystallized orange drink. Grocery stores remodeled to make room for the “Freezer Section”, and my mother was all over it.
She made an exception, though, at holiday time. Thanksgiving dinners were prepared fresh, with only the finest ingredients, and usually featured the same dishes year after year. One holiday she decided her Coke Salad was boring, and introduced instead a pale, orange concoction featuring apricots. Realizing our dinner wouldn’t include plump, juicy cherries confined by coke-flavored cottage cheese, I loudly bemoaned her decision. My sisters echoed my sentiment and the cherries were back in place the following year. What I didn’t realize until recently, though, is that while the center of our table might have been held by a large pine-cone, threaded with multi-colored strips of construction paper, my mother was truly our Thanksgiving centerpiece.
This year, Thanksgiving will find my sister, Candi, hosting her husband’s family at their beach-side condominium. It sounds like a lovely way to spend the holiday, but I wasn’t invited. After assisting with accommodations for the in-laws, my father called seeking reassurance that his three remaining daughters could provide a holiday at “home”. Two weeks later, he called again.
Several telephone calls later resulted in our “family dinner” being held in Cleveland, Georgia, a picturesque mountain town about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta. My sister, Holly, is excited to serve turkey she raised from a chick. I visited the unfortunate fowl a couple of weeks ago. At that point she hadn’t decided which of the several strikingly unattractive birds would make the sacrifice. That’s okay…I didn’t really want to know.
All three of my children have chosen to settle near the town of their birth, necessitating a seventy-five mile drive to my house for Thanksgiving. My daughter will work until four in the afternoon, pushing our dinner late into the evening. They will settle for a store-bought turkey, smoked the day before, and my impressions of the earlier celebration. They will bring friends. My house will be packed to over-flowing, and laughter will fill every corner of every room.
But, I’ll still miss the cherries…
© Copyright 2007-2009 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved
My son, Shane, loves Social Studies class. I know this because his Social Studies lessons are the only ones he regurgitates without provocation. He regularly regales me with facts and figures such as the gross national product of Haiti, and the length and breadth of waterways throughout Italy. This is why I know that his seventh grade Social Studies class is studying the Middle East, and that the country we now know as Iraq used to be called Mesopotamia. I don’t know why they changed the name. “Mesopotamia” is a lovely word, unlike the harshly clipped “Iraq”, or as some people regrettably refer to it, “Eyerack”. But, I digress…
Last Tuesday, as we ticked off subjects on his study checklist, Shane mentioned they were having a guest speaker in Social Studies on Friday. That’s what they call it now. When I was in school, and someone from the “outside” came in to talk, we called it an “assembly”. I always looked forward to assemblies. The verbiage is different, but the excitement inherent in an hour of school being filled by someone other than a teacher remains the same. The conversation ended, he repacked his backpack, and I never gave it another thought.
Until Thursday…Thursday morning I received an email with the subject line “Your Immediate Attention is Needed” from a board member of our athletic association. Supposing the message had to do with my son’s football league, I clicked without hesitation. The first words I read stringently assured me that her son would not be attending school the next day. I was understandably intrigued.
What followed was an email sent by a pastor in her church, complete with official letterhead, which began with the words; “I need to ask you to pray earnestly to stop the spread of discrimination against Christians and violation of “Separation of Church and State”. The pastor went on to explain that the middle school had invited an Islamic speaker to address the seventh grade class as part of a comparative religion study, but had failed to invite a Christian speaker. He expressed his views of this action, calling it “wrong on just so many levels”, and invoked the First Amendment a second time. He urged prayer, being careful not to suppose what action God would have his reader take, making instead a personal plea. He went on to suggest that parents “strongly consider withholding your student from this presentation”, and closed with an invocation to “charge the gates of hell like a mighty army”. The violence inherent in the last sentence shook me. Hoping I had mistaken the context, I read it twice. Realizing I hadn’t, saddened me.
I sat, unseeing, for several minutes after reading the email, while thoughts pinged, wildly, about my brain. I marveled that this email had been forwarded to me at all. Anyone who really knows me would not have included my address in the CC line. I wondered if the pastor had purposely misrepresented the facts, or was truly ignorant of the actual context of the class. Admittedly, I wouldn’t be privy to the details were it not for my son’s love of the subject. And, who is he to harangue anyone regarding the First Amendment, anyway? Why just last week, all students were encouraged to attend a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event held in the school gymnasium!
Sadness quickly became outrage that somehow evoked a memory. Two dark-haired girls rode side-by-side in an aged go-cart that often spoiled the peace of a sunny Sunday afternoon. They rode with abandon and joy-etched faces. I might not have given them a second glance had it not been for their headgear. Instead of a helmet, each girl wore the equivalent of a white, mesh muffin cup on the crown of her head. The clash of cultures was striking; hard core Islamic fundamentalism meets good old American know-how.
And another, more recent Sunday, when the air was cooler, allowing notes played on a distant sitar to float on its buoyancy. Occasionally a mournful male voice accompanied the strings, giving me pause as I weeded the garden. Laughter filled the breaks between songs, urging me to join the party. And, I almost did. I considered walking the few blocks between my house and theirs, if for no other reason than to observe their joy. I had no doubt I would be welcomed by my neighbors. But, I didn’t. The light was fading, and there were so many weeds left to pick…
My son did attend school on Friday, but not before he and I had a talk about what to expect. And I resent that what might have been a discussion about a unique opportunity for understanding, was, instead, a crash course in how to deal with ignorance and hate-mongering.
The day passed, mostly without incident. The local news featured a piece on the uproar, interviewing a protesting parent whose daughter bore the brunt of her father’s “fifteen minutes of fame”. Her plight became the focus of Shane’s re-telling; as he expressed the pity he felt when other children taunted her, and his relief that I hadn’t felt the need to express my opinions in a similar manner. I think he put it best, when during our morning discussion he expressed his dismay at the controversy.
“They’ve done this for seven years, Mom, and we’re not studying religions, we’re studying the Middle East! Islam is the main religion on the Middle East, not Christianity. It wouldn’t make sense to have a Christian speaker!” He has a habit of propping his forehead in the palm of his hand when feeling exasperated and he did so now. A curtain of hair that usually hides one eye now fell over still pudgy fingers.
He raised a solemn face and said quietly, “People just need to quit being scared. We’re just trying to learn. Maybe if they learned they wouldn’t be so scared anymore.”
Out of the mouths of babes…
This past August marked the beginning of our seventh season. After serving as Head Coach for two years, and assisting for a third, Roger opted for what he imagined to be a less hands-on position this year, by volunteering to act as Commissioner for the seventh and eighth grade teams. I had done my time early on, serving as Team Mom for three seasons before opting for an “early retirement”. The break was a welcome one, allowing for more time spent writing while the boys were playing in the dirt.
This year, two weeks into the new season, we found our team without a volunteer to act as Team Mom. There are a number of reasons why this is a liability, but to illustrate without belaboring the point, I’ll employ the image of launching a canoe without benefit of oars. And as large, brown boxes of brightly colored spandex were unloaded in my garage, I felt a touch of spray upon my face, and the familiar warmth of well-worn wood sliding into my reluctant hands.
Last night was Halloween, and I had governance of twenty-three boys, all dressed as football players. Our team made the first round of play-offs, appropriately ending a season of unprecedented rain-outs on what amounted to a mud-pit bracketed by goalposts. They made an impressive showing, losing by only two points to a team that had suffered just one loss through two seasons. Leaving the field wet, muddy, tired, and defeated, the boys were greeted by a rainbow of umbrellas held by wet-footed parents eager to retreat to the relative warmth of their vehicles while racking their brains for plausible arguments against trick-or-treating. Post-game speeches given by rain-soaked coaches were barely audible above drumming canopies and “shishing” rain gear. Cheerleaders held trays of soggy cupcakes, and clocks ticked inside every prepubescent head as the witching hour waned carrying the threat of unmanned Halloween costumes. Within minutes the boys collected a pillowcase, seeded with candy earlier in the week, and struck out, undaunted, in search of more mischief while soggy, preoccupied parents slogged through the mud behind them.
My official duties aren’t finished. I have gifts to order and a party to plan. There has been some talk of an All-Star tournament that will require my organizational skills. But as I eased into my office chair this morning, it was with the knowledge that the worst is over. Most of the mistakes that could be made have either been fixed or avoided entirely; and the boys had a good season, ending the year on a positive, if not winning, note. As I heaved a satisfied sigh into my coffee mug, my inbox blinked.
I clicked before I noticed the email was from “The Parent”. You know the one; the negative parent, the parent who can’t find the time to attend a game, but always finds time to complain about the outcome; the mother who, despite her absence, assures everyone within earshot that her son didn’t get his league-mandated allotment of playing time; the parent who prefers to spend her time critiquing the work of others rather than volunteering to help. An educated eye can spot this person at the beginning of the season. It’s all in the facial expression, the set of her mouth and the turn of her nose, as though she walks ensconced by a noxiously odoriferous cloud no one else seems to notice.
I read the note and decided, without hesitation, to ignore it. I mean, what can she do? Fire me? But her ingratitude did inspire me to put down some words of hard-earned wisdom, a kind of “Everything I Needed To Know I Learned In My First Year As Team Mom”, if you will. This is my swan-song. I’ve tossed my muddied shoes, and advise the next person filling them to invest in a good pair of galoshes. Were I asked to compose a handbook for parents of children playing recreational sports, it would be just this simple:
2. You may assume that every volunteer working with your child does so with the best of intentions. They do not undergo rigorous background checks and mind-numbing training sessions with the purpose of undermining your child’s efforts.
3. No one enjoys asking another person for money, but quality sports programs require a large amount of funding. If your child has expressed an interest in playing youth sports, it is your responsibility to determine the costs involved and whether or not your family can afford to participate. This should be done prior to signing up.
4. Many programs mandate a specific minimum number of plays, per child. Coaches spend a considerable amount of time trying to satisfy this requirement regardless of your child’s ability. If you doubt this, please reread bullet point number two.
5. By the time your child has played a specific sport for a number of years, both you and he should be aware of his skill-set. Be reasonable about your child’s ability to play proficiently. Put another way, some children play sports with an eye towards competing on a higher level, while others play for fun. Be mindful as to which description fits your child, and allow him the freedom to be what he is, instead of what you would have him be.
6. Your athletic ability, or lack thereof, does not necessarily transfer, genetically, to your child. Please reread bullet point number five.
7. If you don’t have anything positive to say, keep your mouth shut. I borrowed this advice from my mother, and have found it serves me well in almost any situation, but is particularly effective when it comes to the emotions evoked by our love for our children. And, in case you missed it, the key word in that last sentence is “love”. Love your children, don’t brow beat them. They are truly doing the best they can do today, which isn’t necessarily as good as they did yesterday, and may be better than they will do tomorrow. Through it all, what they need from you, their parent, is love.
8. Go back and reread bullet points one and two again. If you still feel like your child isn’t being well-served, then it’s time to take a stand, as in stand up and volunteer. Your perspective will change, along with your viewpoint, as you view things from the other side of the bleachers.
Inspiration for Domestication
Noun doyenne: The senior or eldest female member of a group, especially one who is most or highly respected. A woman who is highly experienced and knowledgeable in a particular field, subject, or line of work; expert Synonym: grande dame
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